Reikan FoCal 1.9.5 Release – Nikon Df and RGB Analysis (Windows & Mac)

We’re delighted to announce the release of Reikan FoCal 1.9.5 for Windows and Mac, bringing Nikon Df support, brand new RGB Analysis, and lots of bug fixes and improvements!

Fixes and Improvements

The following is a list of the major improvements across nearly 200 internal revisions of the FoCal software since the release of FoCal 1.9.2:

New features:

• NEW: Addition of RGB Analysis (technical details in this post)
• NEW: Changed Raw image data processing to keep red, green and blue channels isolated (only used for RGB Analysis)
• NEW: Addition of support for the Nikon Df
• NEW: Aperture Sharpness data curve fitting (experimental)
• NEW: AF Consistency shows Peak and Mean lines on chart
• NEW: AF Consistency test allows points to be ignored in both modes

Fixes:

• FIX: Fix in prediction calculation to stop occasional “startIndex” error being shown
• FIX: Fix for “MeteringMode” failure typically seen on start of Target Setup test
• FIX: Fix crash in Target Setup with 90/270 degree or upside down target
• FIX: Fix problem with 6D and 70D where AF Microadjustment value could not be set in the camera
• FIX: Fix issue to stop crash on Windows XP
• FIX: Improvements to the License update handling
• FIX: General improvements to control of ALL Nikon cameras
• FIX: Improvement to chart quality in reports
• FIX: Occasional “Failed to Download” problem on Canon cameras
• FIX: Better memory management
• FIX: Fixes a bug in report generation which could cause an occasional crash
• FIX: Improvement to Raw image processing stability and error reporting
• FIX: Fix to Wide/Tele AF Microadjustment request for first shot (5Dmk3, 1D X, 6D, 70D)
• FIX: Correct operation of automatic centre focus point selection on some Canon cameras
• FIX: Fixed a bug which caused Target Setup zoomed distance calculation to be inaccurate on some cameras
• FIX: Fixed a bug that caused an occasional crash with list displays on Mac
• FIX: General stability improvements on Mac
• FIX: Improvement to raw processing stability on Mac
• FIX: More consistency across the user interface
• FIX: Fix a crash that occurred with TurboCal when a camera is not in Av or M mode.

Modified Behaviour:

• MOD: Original analysis mode now analyses colour data

• IMPORTANT: Due to a change in the release process, on Windows your settings will be reset which means you will NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AND TRANSACTION ID to obtain your license.  Please make a note of these from the LMS before you install FoCal 1.9.5.

As you can see, we’ve been pretty busy!

Nikon Df Support

The new Df is an exciting new camera from Nikon.  It took a while for Nikon to release their SDK, but once it was available we managed to get our hands on a Df for validation testing and have successfully integrated support for this camera into FoCal.  Like other Nikon cameras, it’ll run in MSC mode (so you’ll have to occasionally change the AF Fine Tune setting during calibration), but everything else is fully automatic.

RGB Analysis

The analysis used in FoCal for the last 2 years has been generally fairly well suited to analysing the difference between almost identical images.  But it’s always been a little affected by movement of the image (e.g. through focus breathing) and by changes in light level.

The new RGB Analysis method introduced in FoCal 1.9.5 solves the problems with the original analysis, to the point where quite different images can be analysed and the results compared – this means we can independently analyse red, green and blue channels in both the horizontal and vertical directions to derive a final Quality of Focus value.  If you’re interested in the technical details and comparison of the new and old analysis methods, check out this post.

We have big plans for this new analysis as it opens up some pretty exciting possibilities for the tests in FoCal.  For now, it should bring you much more consistency and accuracy under more changeable lighting and environment conditions, as well as giving a hint about lens distortion, aberration and vibration during the test.

Nikon Improvements

Adding support for the Df highlighted a few weaknesses in the FoCal Nikon support, so we’ve improved the whole way that Nikon cameras are handled.  This should lead to more reliable operation on both Windows and Mac.

Canon Improvements

There have been a few irritating difficult-to-reproduce problems affecting some of the later Canon cameras with support for two-point AF Microadjustment (the 6D and 70D) which we have fixed.  We’ve also fixed a few bugs which caused occasional failures to start tests with somewhat odd error messages.

Mac Improvements

FoCal was originally developed on Windows and ported to the Mac, and there have been some causes of unreliability in the Mac software which have led to occasional random crashes.  We have worked to improve the reliability on the Mac with this release and we’ve got more to do.  For those who experienced any problems on the Mac, we hope you see a significant improvement, and rest assured that we’ll continue to improve.

Customer Support

We’ve mentioned before that we’ve had some issues with our customer support, but these are all fixed now and we hope that those of you who have contact us in the last 1-2 months have experienced a good level of support from Reikan.

We have spent a long time testing this software release with a lot of cameras and lenses, but as it’s such a comprehensive set of changes there are likely to be a few minor bugs.  Please do report them through the support system Contact page) if you find anything and we’ll get to work on fixing it!

Software Support Status

Mac

The following table shows the support for FoCal for Mac:

Operating System	Camera Manufacturer	Status
OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
OS X 10.7 (Lion)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional

Windows

The following table shows the support for FoCal for Windows:

Operating System	Camera Manufacturer	Status
Windows XP	Canon only	Fully functional
Windows Vista	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
Windows 7	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
Windows 8	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
Windows 8.1	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional

Additional Information

The following is additional information specific to this release:

Known Issues

• IMPORTANT: Due to a change in the release process, on Windows your settings will be reset which means you will NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AND TRANSACTION ID to obtain your license.  Please make a note of these from the LMS before you install FoCal 1.9.5.
• There is an occasional error which occurs on the Mac during Raw image processing.  We have only seen this occasionally and only on the Canon 6D, but it may happen with other cameras.  If you see a message indicating a failure during raw processing, you may need to close and restart FoCal or switch to JPEG capture mode.
• The Near and Far buttons in Target Setup may not change the focus position with certain Nikon lenses.  The workaround is to manually adjust the lens position.  We have a solution for this which will be available in the next release of FoCal.

Other Information

• The Testing Guide is somewhat out of date and we are planning a rewrite shortly.  The general concepts are still very valid, but the operational information towards the end of the guide relates to older versions of FoCal.
• The File Camera functionality in FoCal is no longer being maintained.  We don’t believe there are many users of this feature and we will be re-implementing the ability to run tests on files in a much more user friendly way shortly.
• The version number of the Target Image files has been updated – this is purely to update the copyright text at the bottom of the target and there is no need to reprint the newer targets for analysis.

How do I get it?

If you already have a license for FoCal, you can download the software at no extra cost from the License Management System – you’ll see the link to the download near the bottom of the page once you log in.

You can purchase FoCal Standard, FoCal Plus or FoCal Pro from the links at the bottom of the version information pages.

MAC: The software is available as a disk image (DMG) file for OS X, containing the software itself, the target images and documentation in separate directories.

WINDOWS: The software is available as a ZIP file, which contains the software, the target images and the documentation in separate directories.

• IMPORTANT: Due to a change in the release process, on Windows your settings will be reset which means you will NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AND TRANSACTION ID to obtain your license.  Please make a note of these from the LMS before you install FoCal 1.9.5.

Installing on OS X (IMPORTANT!)

FoCal for Mac uses the Mono framework and this must be installed before using FoCal.  Please see this post for complete information on how to ensure your Mac is set up correctly to run FoCal.  If you do not follow these instructions, FoCal will NOT operate correctly!

QuickStart Guides

There are short guides available which help you through the installation, connection and first use of the software available for Windows and for Mac on the Document Downloads page.